Recalling Korea (longing and nausea)

A couple of weeks ago we went down to Lakewood for a Korean dinner with our friends Don and Jill Tracy, who had never had Korean food before. I made this layout and just felt compelled to do all the journaling in Korean (on my tablet). I was waxing nostalgic.

My very favorite meal is a good kimchi jjigae bek pan ("bek pan" is the rice and side dish part), but to be really, really good it has to have kim (roasted laver seaweed) as well. Restaurants generally don't provide kim in their side dishes, so when I'm going to have kimchi jjigae I get my own kim and take it along. This always seems to amuse the waitresses. (Look! It's an American eating kimchi jjigae! With kim!) I tried giving Kate some kim before and she didn't like it, but this time she decided it was good and ate several pieces.

This is not where the nausea comes in (though much as I like Korean food, my stomach often does feel a little weird afterwards, especially if I haven't eaten it in a while). Yesterday we got out our home movies from Korea, which we hadn't watched in years. When Doug and I were teaching in Chonan, we borrowed a video camera and shot a few hours' worth of footage. It was fun to watch our ten-years-younger selves and remember all the fun things that we did, and our teeny apartment with the black-tiled bathroom, and Doug's hilarious bit with the green syrup ("My mama always said that one should always put melon syrup on one's pancakes"). Unfortunately, with the hand-held camera shake, I can only watch a few minutes before I start feeling queasy. Motion sickness is not generally a pervasive problem for me, but there are certain things that get to me. It's a shame. I'm sure I'd watch these videos more often if they didn't make me want to toss my cookies. Maybe one of these day we'll get them digitized and I can post short clips of the good parts.

I've been thinking about Korea a lot. Something will come up--a smell, a feeling in the air, a stand of cosmos flowers in somebody's yard, and it takes me right back. Sometimes I miss it so badly it hurts. Actually as the weather has been warming up, my desire to go to Korea has been waning somewhat, thinking about how beastly hot and humid it gets there in the summer. The urge seems to strike mostly in the Spring and Fall. Fall in Korea is just so heart-achingly beautiful. I always get kind of wistful in the fall, anyway.

I've been lucky--after my mission, I got to go back to Korea twice. Many people never get to go back at all. But it's been ten years now, almost, and the itch returns. I've been trying to figure out how we could go back again. When Doug and I went and taught in Chonan, we'd only been married about six weeks when we arrived. People were surprised that we would do something like that so soon after getting married, but really, when else are you going to do it? We had both recently graduated (Doug had finished his M.A.), had no house, no jobs, no kids--sure, let's run off and see the world! We did, and it was great fun. And after Korea, we got to spend three years in Newfoundland. I miss Newfoundland a lot too, though I don't dream about it very much. But settling down (sort of), accumulating lots of stuff and obligations and two large and complex computer systems, not to mention a child, makes uprooting and taking off a rather more daunting prospect.

I find myself drawn to stories about families who get to raise their kids in more than one culture. There's something very appealing in the idea, an increased richness of experience, a different understanding, perhaps a focusing of priorities, after seeing what things are important to people in different places. I recently ran across the story of this American girl (at least I guess she's American--Belgian father, American mother) graduating from high school in Korea. Rural Korea, even. There's also a video at the bottom of this page. She just sounds so astonishingly Korean to me. I am intrigued. I would love for my kids to have an opportunity like that. Maybe not actually attending a Korean high school, knowing what they go through, but, well, it is intriguing.

I've felt a sense of urgency, for some reason, to go, go, do it now before life gets even more complicated. But I have to keep telling myself that Korea will still be there. It changes, but it will still be there. I'll get back somehow, eventually. Maybe to stay for a while, maybe just to visit--long enough to walk the mountains, to explore, to eat, and of course take lots of pictures. Someday.

Putting the Fun back in Fungi

A couple of years ago, when my family was visiting for the occasion of Kate's birth, I sent my dad out for salad makings and we got into a discussion about who did and didn't like mushrooms. After identifying the fungophobes and fungophiles, we got a little wacky.

If you're afraid of mushrooms you're a fungophobe.
If you like mushrooms you're a fungophile.

Which means...

If you're afraid of people who like mushrooms you're a fungophilophobe
and if you like people who are afraid of mushrooms you're a fungophobophile.

This can, of course, be applied to lots of other words. Think of the possibilities!

Ramblings

I was just commenting on my sister-in-law Karen's poetry blog, and said that "Tim'rous Beastie" would be a great screen name. Things like this pop into my brain every once in a while, and I think, "Wow, that would be a great screen name!" but can I remember them later? I really need to start writing them down. Not that I really need a lot of alternate screen names. But you never know when one might come in handy.

Yesterday Kate woke up around 6:30--much earlier than she usually gets up--and was able to spend a little time with Daddy before he left for his morning classes. That was nice. She sure loves her Daddy. Then when I got out of the shower I found her sound asleep on the floor, right outside the bathroom, with her bum up in the air. She never does this (never falls asleep on the floor, I mean. She does sleep in this position sometimes). I just had to take a picture.



We discovered that Doug doesn't have any classes for summer quarter at his main school, and he's not hopeful of getting any at the other places he teaches either. I guess enrollment is down this summer. So he'll be looking for something else to do for a few months. I suppose there's a chance that he might find something that could end up being a better job for him. Though we do enjoy the amount of time he gets to spend at home, with his teaching schedule. I was contemplating that the other day--there's the uncertainty of the part-time teaching position, but on the other hand we get to do a lot of things together. Yesterday we spent a couple of hours at the beach. Kate and I played in the sand while Doug graded papers. Now we just need somebody to hire him full time. It's not that he doesn't want to teach, he'd just like to do it with a little more stability.

Doug's parents are coming on Monday. I need to finish getting the place cleaned up. Good incentive.

The book of Glorie Jean

Our friend Rebecca has this cute little dog named Glorie Jean that she just loves. I've taken a lot of pictures of Glorie Jean over the past couple of years, so I had this idea to make a little book for her birthday (Rebecca's birthday, that is, not Glorie Jean's birthday. I don't know when Glorie Jean's birthday is). Her birthday was back in March and it took me a while to get the book put together, but I finally finished it. I had it printed at sharedink.com. The finished book came in the mail on Friday, and I took a couple of pictures of it before we took it over to Rebecca's house. The printing and binding both seem really nice.

Here are all the spreads from the book--the way they looked on my computer, before going to the printer. The finished pages had a little trimmed off around the edges. You have to plan for that.









Rebecca loved her book!

Kate-speak 101

We have unraveled the principles of Kate's pronunciation. To start with, G's and K's turn into D's and T's. That part was easy enough to figure out. But also, for words that start with an S followed by another consonant, she puts the S at the end. That one took quite a bit longer to decipher. She does it very consistently, though, so we eventually caught on. Hence, snap, snail, and star become naps, nails, and dars, respectively. Squirrel is dirls, and squish is diss. She and Doug play a squishing game on the bed. It's just too cute to hear her yelling "Diss! Diss!" and shrieking with laughter.

Kate has known the word "turtle" for some time, but recently added "tortoise." One of her books has a tortoise in it. I told her that a tortoise is like a turtle. Now whenever we read that book she points to it and says, "Tortoise! Tortoise like a turtle." One of our neighbors even has a little tortoise in a terrarium, so Kate got to see a real tortoise. That was pretty exciting. She has also learned that a toad is like a frog. Another neighbor has a bird bath with a little stone toad on it, and Kate will go over and pat the toad and say "Toad like a frog!" When watching the Veggie Tales song about Barbara Manatee (from the library) I told her that a manatee is like a whale, which she accepted easily enough, but then Doug suggested that perhaps a manatee is more like a seal or a walrus, so we'll have to see if we can correct that.

Kate has been finding animals in her food. The other day she held up a bit of cheese from the pizza we were eating, and informed us that it was a seahorse. Tonight her bits of naan bread contained a hippo, a whale, a wolf, and a horse. This seems like pretty advanced abstraction for a two-and-a-half year old, but Doug told me that she had some bug-shaped graham crackers in the nursery at church that made quite an impression on her, so maybe that's where she got the idea.

Poor Man's Cake

I made a Poor Man's Cake this afternoon. It's kind of a family staple (from my family, when I was growing up) but it's been a long time since I've made one. In fact I don't think Kate had ever had it before. It's called Poor Man's Cake because it doesn't use eggs or milk. Actually it does use eggs, but they're optional. We always put them in. So I guess it's only half-poor. The real point of this cake is that it's made with whole wheat flour, and honey instead of sugar. This was almost always what we had for birthdays and such.

Somebody at church once asked me for the recipe and I never gave it to her, so I thought I'd post it here.



Poor Man's Cake

In a large bowl, mix together:

4 cups whole wheat flour
½-1 tsp salt
1½ tsp baking powder
1½ tsp baking soda
½-1 tsp cinnamon

In a blender put:

¾ cup vegetable oil
¾ cup honey (I have reduced this to slightly less than ½ cup and it's still plenty sweet for me)
1½-2 cups water
2 carrots (optional)
2 eggs (optional)
(I like to add a little nutmeg too)

Blend ingredients in blender. Beat both mixtures together. Add ½-1 cup raisins if desired.

Bake in a greased and floured 13"x9" pan at 350° for 30-35 minutes or until done.

Memories of Lloyd Alexander

Once upon a time, lo these many years ago, I was at BYU--this would have been the 93-94 school year, I think. My roommate Christy, who was an Elementary Music Ed major, was taking a Children's Lit class. Now I pretty much never stopped reading kids' books, so I had a great time talking to her about the stuff she was reading and recommending books, and reading the ones that she brought home. The class sounded like so much fun that I decided to take it the next semester. At the same time Christy found out that Dr. Tunnell and Dr. Jacobs were going to be teaching an evening seminar on Lloyd Alexander. Dr. Tunnell and Dr. Jacobs are both Lloyd Alexander nuts, and have written extensively about him and had a lot of contact with him in the process, and they had convinced Lloyd, who never went anywhere, to come out to BYU and speak, and they had planned this seminar in conjunction with the visit.

We both decided to sign up for the seminar (Christy took it for credit--I audited). Most of the other people were children's librarians and teachers. We read most of his books (some of which I had read before, some I hadn't), heard a lot about Lloyd's life, and were treated to readings from the delightful and out-of-print Janine is French, about how he met his wife. I was taking a bookbinding class at the same time, so I made a link-stitch book with a pig on the front (copied from Eveline Ness's cover illustration of The Book of Three) and a matching clamshell box.

The day of Lloyd's visit, he spoke during the afternoon to a crowded concert hall full of elementary school children. He read from The Arkadians, his most recent book, and answered questions from the audience. I remember one boy asked, "What does Gurgi sound like?" and he replied, "Gurgi sounds like what you think he should sound like." In the evening he came to our class, visited with us and signed all our books. One lady handed him a book open to a specific passage and asked, "Could you read this for us?" It was a bit of Gurgi dialog. Lloyd looked stricken and everybody laughed. Dr. Tunnell said, "There was a boy this afternoon who asked what Gurgi sounded like." And the lady said, "I know! That was my son!" Lloyd did read it for us (I think it was a bit about smackings and whackings on his poor tender head), sounding properly pitiful and squeaky, and we all applauded.



Several people had gifts for Lloyd, and I gave him the book and box I had made. He exclaimed over it for a while and gave me a kiss on the cheek (awww!).

We had watched a film in class earlier where Lloyd talked about answering fan mail, and showed off a few things that readers had made for him, like some little figures of the Prydain characters. So I pictured him keeping my little book in his office and maybe showing it off to somebody else later. Shortly afterwards I got this letter.

Best known for his Prydain Chronicles, Lloyd Alexander wrote nearly forty books, many of which feature cats and/or spunky redheads. He passed away May 17th at the age of 83, at home in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. His wife Janine died just two weeks ago. They were married for 62 years.

Happy Mother's Day!

The quest for the Mother's Day photo continues.

It's May! It's May!

What a beautiful spring we are having! It's been so nice out lately. We celebrated Children's Day on May 5th with our traditional pictures-in-front-of-the-flowers at the park. (It's a Korean thing.) Kate got to check out a worm (she likes to watch them but isn't much inclined to touch them), and had fun playing with her daddy on the grass.





May 5th, in addition to being Cinco de Mayo, and Children's Day, (and Kentucky Derby day, this year) was also National Scrapbooking Day. We had a big sale at NDISB--combination National Scrapbook Day sale and "Yay! We're back from the crash!" sale. My breakthrough templates have been selling amazingly well. I have a feeling this may be the one thing I end up being known for--"You know that one lady who makes the torn and curled paper templates?" It's funny. You never know what's going to catch on.

Here are a couple more layouts with the breakthrough templates:



(Credits here: Your Eyes and Betsey & Angie)

"There is no WAY that's a digital product!"

My brother (Peter) made a clip for me, from last week's "Dishin' the Digi" show, of just the part where they're talking about my layout. Click here to listen. (In fact it is a digital product--but made with real paper!)

From "Dishin' the Digi - Coast 2 Coast" on DiSc Talk Radio, with Shanah Gordon and deann McDaniel. Used with permission.

Wall Words

We still don't have everything unpacked and put away, but our kitchen window is now sporting this extra accent. I got these vinyl wall words from Emily Kate Designs (Edit: looks like she's not doing vinyl anymore). It was very quick and not expensive, and easy to apply, and fun! It's a Korean proverb that I loosely translate as "Before we climb the mountain, let's eat first." I've kind of adopted it as my food motto. When my blood sugar gets low I get cranky (and sometimes downright irrational and hostile) so in order to keep on top of things I really have to plan and start cooking before I get hungry. It's taken a long time to learn (and still doesn't always work out right). This was a particular problem when I was serving as a missionary in Korea, and things were often busy and pretty stressful, but by learning to plan ahead I was able to keep meltdowns to a minimum. And of course, it helped that I like Korean food, too!

The woven straw scoops are from Korea, too. I'm not exactly sure what they're for. In my last area I was serving in Sunchon and a lady came to the door selling them. My companion, Sister Kim Su Gyoung, bought them for me. She said they had something to do with the date, and I think she even said they should be hung up in the kitchen. (I'll have to find someone who actually knows, to tell me more about them.) I've been carrying these scoops around with me for almost 14 years, and I figured it was time to finally do something with them.

Despite all my artistic interests I've rarely done much in the way of decorating. Whether it seemed like too much work, or I wanted to but just never got around to it, or the places we were renting just seemed too small and utilitarian, I can't say. But it's been kind of fun dressing up our kitchen window. Now when I'm in there cooking I can enjoy our pretty white curtains and my Korean motto, and remember to eat before I go climbing any mountains.

Cutie Kate

Kate, lying on her daddy, while playing on the grass outside yesterday afternoon.

Stay away from those giant mutant alien worms!

I had a dream the other night where I was in a play that involved these giant mutant alien tubeworm things. The alarming part was that they were using real giant mutant alien tubeworms, waving menacingly at the front of the stage. There was one scene of the play where I had to pull one of these things out of its tube and wrestle it or something. I remember I was ranting to somebody in my dream about how irresponsible it was for them to use these dangerous creatures, and somebody could be killed. I said, "What happens if these things go running through the audience?" I was quite put out.

I seem to recall that I was also upset because I hadn't learned my lines properly.

I have weird dreams.

Dishin' the Digi (woot!)

My Sidewalk Chalk layout is being spotlighted DiSc Talk Radio's "Dishin' the Digi--Coast 2 Coast" show this week! This is cool. I'd heard of the show but I hadn't listened to it before. It was fun to hear them talking about my page. (Mine's the last layout that they talk about, starting at about 40 minutes). And they even said my name right! Wheeee!

Beyond BLT

Last summer we discovered that BLT's make pretty good travel food (as long as you've got a place to sit down to assemble and eat the sandwiches, and aren't trying to do it while you're driving or anything like that). We added avocado to ours, which of course made BLAT's. One day, in a punchy mood, we came up with these other variations:

BLOT--bacon, lettuce, olives, and tomato.

BLECH--bacon, lettuce, egg, cheese, and ham

BARF--bacon, avocado, radishes, and feta

The one about the crocodile

I've added, down at the bottom of the sidebar, a link to a webpage I put together a few years ago with my sister Betsey's emails. (I asked--she said it was okay.) Betsey spent a semester at the BYU Jerusalem center, and then later went to Costa Rica for an undergraduate research program. The emails that she sent were very interesting and quite funny. The entry called "Crocodile hunting and Rollerskating (not simultaneously)" is particularly noteworthy.

There's a hole in my layout!

I made this torn-edge template a few days ago. I'd kind of gotten myself into a little creative funk, where I had lots of semi-formed ideas but nothing that was really capturing my imagination, and I couldn't decide what I wanted to do next. But once I started working on this it all came together beautifully, and this morning I woke up with more ideas, so life is good again.

Here's a layout I made this morning, using the template. The paperclip and the ribbon are from Anita Stergiou's "Floriade" collection; everything else is mine.

(Update: Since NDISB has closed, this template is now available here.)

We Wanna Rock!

Kate has discovered the joys of throwing rocks in the water. We've been going out to the beach a lot, as the weather's getting warmer, and that's all she wants to do. Luckily there are lots and lots of rocks on the beach, so there's no chance she'll run out any time soon.

Her throwing technique has improved dramatically. A few weeks ago I took her to the duck pond, well-supplied with bread for the ducks and peanuts for any intrepid squirrels we happened to meet. The ducks were hungry and Kate was trying to feed them, but just couldn't manage it. She kept walking toward them with bread clutched in her out-stretched fist, which of course made the ducks run the other way, and then she would fling her hand out and the bread would fall right at her feet.

On this same outing we did in fact meet a squirrel who was not only intrepid but downright stalker-ish. He followed us all around the pond, begging for peanuts. He climbed halfway up my pants leg, and also climbed up trees as we went by and peeked out, right at eye-level, stretching forward and kind of bobbing his head like he was getting ready to take a flying leap. Now, I like squirrels, but I was worried that he might jump on Kate, and I could see that going badly. Don't want to give her a squirrel-phobia for the rest of her life. (I couldn't help thinking of that line from Over the Hedge--"I am a crazy rabid squirrel!") We managed to avoid being leapt upon, and after he ate up the last of our peanuts he eventually figured out that there was no more forthcoming and stopped following us around.

Kate can actually get the rocks into the water now. Or the bread to the ducks, as the case may be. Of course, she still throws like a girl. And she doesn't seem to like waves, so if the water is rough at all she doesn't get too close, and instead of throwing the rocks in herself she has me throw them. She picks up rocks and hands them to me and says, "Throw this!" (Toss) "Throw this!" (Toss) "Throw this!" Lather, rinse, repeat. As we walk around on the beach I've been picking up rocks myself. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do with them yet, but something. My jacket pocket is now full of interesting-looking rocks. In fact, as I was putting on my jacket to leave for church this morning I noticed how heavy it was. I need to get them out of there.

Easter Dress

Here's Kate in the pretty dress that her Aunt Barbie made for her. (It looks a lot like last year's dress, since they were both made from fabrics that Barb picked out for her wedding.)

We have church from 9:00 to 12:00. It's always a mad dash to get Kate ready in the morning, and then when we get home she's tired and cranky, but I took along my camera so could snap a few pictures as soon as we got home (and she had a couple of eggs that they gave her in Nursery). It was sunny and the lighting was not great, and Kate did not have an overabundance of patience. Here she is hollering at me to stop taking her picture.

"If you like to waltz with potatoes..."

After I posted about Kate singing wordlessly to herself, we were having dinner and she was sitting in her highchair playing with her applesauce, and we heard her sing, "He's a tramp... I looooove him!" (Guess what she'd just been watching?) We were much amazed and amused. And last night she was singing part of the Primary song (from church) that goes, "Hello! (Hello) Hello! (Hello) we welcome you today." It's so fun. I've heard her sing recognizable snatches of the alphabet song, but it's just neat to hear her putting things together with words.

All of us at NDISB have been working hard at getting the store put back together. They weren't able to restore anything from their older backup, which means they lost their entire customer database. Very sad. But we're determined to bring it back better than ever.



I just finished up this Potato Prints set. I did the potato stamping back in January, and then got distracted with other things. It was fun. And messy. I had potatoes and paint piled up on the kitchen table for days. I also painted a cantaloupe and rolled it on the paper. (And then we ate it!)

I also got Baby Blue-Eyes up in the store, and the creative team ladies have been doing wonderful things with it. Here's a layout by Karen and one by Audrey.